Opinion: An apple a day can hurt you

Before I begin this column, let me just say that I am in no way an advocate of child abuse in any form. At no time do I believe a child should be physically or mentally/emotionally abused. I needed to add that disclaimer because after viewing the video of bus monitor Karen Klein and the verbal abuse she sustained at the hands of four boys aged 11-13, some of my comments may seem contradictory.

The first thing that caught my attention was the way those little boys were calling Ms. Klein by her first name.

Now, when I was growing up, I was taught that anyone considered to be my elder had to be referred to as “Miss So and So,” or “Mr. So and So.” My parents would have smacked my lips off if I had gone up to an adult, especially someone old enough to be my grandmother, and said, “What’s up, Karen?”

But calling Ms. Klein by her first name was just the tip of the iceberg.

Watching Ms. Klein cry because she was being cursed at, poked and belittled without provocation had me literally screaming, “Oh, no they di’nt,” at the computer screen. And yes, I said “di’nt” and not “didn’t” because what I was witnessing did not warrant the proper use of grammar.

I was hot like fish grease, and God knows had I been the bus monitor, there would have been a completely different kind of video posted on YouTube. I won’t give details, but let’s just say after I got finished with those boys, I would have had to get accustomed to wearing stripes or a completely unflattering orange jumpsuit.

It seems at least one of the parents, Robert Helm, went to Ms. Klein’s house to apologize. But he went while a national news team was filming and after his family received death threats about what happened. Mr. Helm said he felt “angry,” “sad” and “horrified” after seeing the video. He stated he couldn’t believe any of his children would be capable of doing such a thing because, “That is not the way they were raised.”

I’ll come back to that in a minute.

Anyway, three of the four boys, along with their parents, wrote letters of apology to Ms. Klein, and hopefully the fourth boy will send a letter as well. One of the boys, Luis Recio Jr. said he was pressured into recording the incident.

“They like told me to record and I’m just like, Yeah, OK, I’m going to record it. I feel bad about how, like, they were making fun of her and everything,” he said.

Yeah, I’m sure he is just devastated.

Had the video not gone viral and people across the country not been outraged, I’m sure those boys wouldn’t have given what they had done a second thought. I was watching Ms. Klein do an interview on CBS News, and when asked if the boys were just acting like jerks or if they were rotten apples, Ms. Klein’s response was, “Two are jerks, and two are rotten apples.”

Well, we all know that apples (or jerks for that matter) don’t fall too far from the tree. So, although Mr. Helm states he didn’t raise his children to act in such a manner, if all of the boys were really taught respect not only for themselves but also for other people, including their families, the incident probably never would have occurred and there would have been no video to post.

Hopefully, this incident has taught the boys and their parents that one bad apple really does spoil the whole barrel, so they all need to plant new seeds.

Geveryl Robinson, formerly of Savannah, lives and writes in Atlanta. She can be contacted at geveryl@gmail.com.